Posts Tagged: karen stintz


15
Sep 11

On transit: keep cutting until ridership drops

The National Post’s Natalie Alcoba:

In order to fill a combined $101-million shortfall in regular and Wheel-Trans service for 2012, chief general manager Gary Webster is recommending the commission run less frequent buses, cut its workforce, and support in principle a 10¢ fare hike to cover the remaining $29-million gap. TTC chair Karen Stintz stressed a fare increase is not up for consideration now.

Loath to face the scorn of a public dead set against bus route cutbacks earlier this year, officials have opted for a strategy that trims costs without cancelling routes.

via Prepare for more crowded buses as TTC report recommends service cuts | Posted Toronto | National Post.

This is a fine bit of gamesmanship from Stintz and the TTC. Suddenly they’re not calling a move that will see buses removed from service a “cut.” It’s an efficiency or reallocation, or whatever, despite the fact that this move will absolutely make service much worse for a large number of riders.

Rob Ford seems to be rather unshakable in his opposition to a fare increase, which I guess owes to his commitment to populism. As Steve Munro has argued, a fare increase is of ten or twenty cents is probably more than justified going into next year’s budget, and in any case seems far preferable to to deep cuts to service.

These sort of budget games only serve to underline the fact that there’s only one proven way to significantly reduce transit costs, and that’s to limit ridership increases. The TTC was at its most affordable in the 1990s, when ridership was at record lows across the board. It was only after the Miller administration started being proactive to promote transit — primarily by increasing service through the Ridership Growth Strategy — that ridership numbers grew to now-record highs.

There are two paths forward for transit in this city. One sees an improved emphasis on frequent and quality service and a coordinated demand for fair and equitable funding for both operating and capital from the other orders of government. The other sees us turn back the clock, slash service to save money, and ultimately cause ridership to fall again, resulting in those lower department costs the Fords have been chasing.

Of course, those cut off from transit will still need to get around, resulting in higher costs elsewhere, but that kind of thinking — long-term, high-level, proactive — isn’t really in vogue these days.


4
Aug 11

Budgeting and the art of distraction

Those opposed to service cuts as part the City of Toronto’s 2012 operating budget were reasonably happy when they heard that Councillor James Pasternak, a fairly consistent ally of the Fords, had come out publicly in general opposition to library branch closures. They were even happier when, soon after, heretofore stalwart Ford supporter & TTC Chair Karen Stintz voiced the same opinion. But when Councillor Frances Nunziata jumped on the I-oppose-library-cuts bandwagon yesterday, things started to feel a little contrived. With all these Friends-of-Ford making headlines with their valiant support for Toronto’s libraries, the question has to be asked: were library branch closures ever really on the table at all?

Torontoist’s Hamutal Dotan thinks all these “Save Our Libraries” shenanigans may add up to little more than a big distraction:

So where does this leave us? The library system is just one item in the giant inventory of City services (a.k.a. “savings opportunities”) that the municipal government might cut in anticipation of the 2012 budget. And the public’s strong defence of the library system, heartwarming and essential though it has been, has had one unfortunate side-effect: distracting attention from other services that have less vocal or less organized supporters, are less politically favoured, and are much more likely to actually be cut, even though they too are much beloved and much relied-upon by a broad community of users.

via “Look Over Here, Guys!” (Or, How Libraries May Be Safe but Other Services Aren’t) | Torontoist.

This isn’t really a conspiracy theory, despite appearances. The Ford administration’s only strategic move throughout this whole budget consultation has been to hold all cards to the chest and offer little comment on what might get cut. This enables them to wave off passionate defence of services as premature and paranoid, while at the same time continuing to advance the idea that all programs and services are on the table for potential cuts. The consequence of this vague and inexact approach is that engaged citizens have to play their politics like a game of Twister, attempting to cover all the spots on the board they care about.

At linebreaks.com, Mike Smith explores this notion further:

The Fords likely never had any realistic intention of closing libraries. I have little doubt they would if they could. But by trundling it out as a possibility, they make more generalized cuts — staff, hours, community programming, circulation — feel less severe, like a concession. They may even potentially neutralize a certain amount of activism by making people see victory in “reducing” cuts to the ones that had been planned all along.

Well, alright. To be honest, I don’t know if they actually plan it that way. For all I know, blinkered prejudice and bumbling contempt just happen to have the same effect in the end as keenly enacted right-wing strategy. But it’s the effect that matters, and the effect is twofold: expand the boundaries of the possible for yourself, while limiting the same for your opponents.

via So, Rob Ford and Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci walk in to a library… | linebreaks.com.

If I had to speculate, I’d bet that the vaunted 2012 budget shortfall is made up for with some combination of the following: Some 250+ million in unused surpluses from prior years combined with other revenues; a property tax hike at two or three percent; further cuts to TTC bus routes (this may be accompanied by a fare freeze as a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down); steep hike to user fees for city-run recreational programs; the elimination of some or all of the Community Partnership & Investment Program (CPIP) grants; a reduction in hiring for Police and Fire Services; reduction in hours at community centres and libraries; and probably some asset sales, including city-owned old age homes. They’ll also knock a few million off the top through continued administrative efficiencies, continuing a trend started several budgets ago.

CPIP is the one sure-thing in the list. It’s the mayor’s go-to example for waste at City Hall and the cover provided by this year’s convenient budget crisis makes for the perfect opportunity to take a knife to it.


28
Jul 11

The end of Toronto’s Rob Ford experiment?

This may be a monumental week in the world of municipal politics. The Globe’s Marcus Gee referred to it as a possible turning of the tide while the National Post Political Panel posed it as an ‘unravelling’ of the Fords. Torontoist’s Hamutal Dotan penned a very good editorial on the Fords and their tactics, calling this a “particularly bad week.”

However you want to characterize it, somewhere in the midst of an embarrassing CP24 interview, allegations that the mayor gave a child the finger while breaking traffic laws, and a weird incident where the mayor’s brother gleefully stated his total ignorance of one of Canadian’s most well-known literary icons, something changed. The unlikely — and maybe underserved — sheen of respectability that has coated the mayor and his inner circle since he took office last fall may actually be wearing off.

And if I can be cynically smug for a second: of course it is. Anyone who was paying attention would have to know it could end up this way. The Pygmalion-ish notion that we could dress Councillor Rob Ford and his history of gaffes up as a Big City Mayor, one who somehow represents a new post-partisan, post-ideological era with a solid mandate for change, was always tied up in a lot of overly-optimistic bullshit.

It’s too soon to dub Toronto’s Rob Ford experiment over — this week will still likely fade into the past — but I have to think that the consistent bad press, coupled with the high-profile departure from a piece of the agenda by TTC Chair and Ford ally Karen Stintz, will ultimately end up meaning something.

It is important to remember, however, that Rob Ford is and will always be Rob Ford. The real path to change lies not in trying to convince Ford, his brother, and their small inner circle of councillors to somehow see the light on key issues, but instead to exert pressure on councillors like Stintz (or James Pasternak, who also came out against library cuts.) who like to think of themselves as more reasonable — and/or politically ambitious — and convince them that Rob Ford isn’t the guy they want to bet their political career on.


22
Jul 11

Ford looks to fire GM, kill streetcars in push toward ‘joke’ of transit plan

There’s more high drama and intrigue at the TTC these days as Mayor Rob Ford and his brother Doug seem bound and determined to stick to an election promise to fund and build an extension of the Sheppard Subway, even if it means firing General Manager Gary Webster and dismantling the City’s streetcar system. I can offer no explanation as to why they feel so strongly about keeping this promise while simultaneously breaking other, more important promises.

Nevertheless, The Toronto Star’s Tess Kalinowski has the story:

Gary Webster, the TTC’s top executive, is caught in the crosshairs of Mayor Rob Ford’s administration, prompting fears that Toronto transit could be headed on a disastrous course if he’s fired.

A 30-year TTC veteran, the 60-year-old chief general manager has drawn the ire of the Fords over his refusal to support the Sheppard subway extension the mayor wants to build, say Toronto Star sources.

Most transit experts, including former TTC boss David Gunn, consider the subway plan a joke.

via Ford plotting to oust TTC chief over subway extension | Toronto Star.

A joke! That’s great.

Kalinowski also confirms something I’ve heard in a few places: that TTC Chair Karen Stintz and the mayor are at odds over Webster’s future, with Stintz sticking up for her GM. That the Fords have apparently floated Case Ootes and Gordon Chong — are these their only allies? — as potential replacements can’t establish much confidence. No offence meant to either man, but careers as an oil company executive and a dentist, respectively, don’t exactly lend themselves to running the day-to-day operations of one of North America’s largest transit systems.

There’a also this, from the same article:

The plan to get rid of Webster “is in play now,” said former TTC vice-chair Joe Mihevc.

“(The Fords) are so committed to Sheppard they are actively contemplating getting rid of the entire streetcar system in Toronto,” he said, adding that the cost of the new streetcars could be applied to the subway.

“If Doug Ford bullies his way through on this, it truly will be the victory of extreme authoritarian ideology over good public transit policy and good business management,” Mihevc said.

Councillor Mihevc could be working off second-hand information, so it’s probably unfair to jump to immediate conclusions, but let’s go with this line of thinking as an exercise. Toronto’s streetcar system — including the right-of-way routes on St. Clair & Spadina — carries almost 275,000 riders per day. The Sheppard Subway, at its current abbreviated length, carries just under 50,000. (These are 2008 figures.) If this streetcars-for-Sheppard scheme is an attempt to win populist approval, it’s entirely backwards.

Transit advocate Steve Munro has the last word on this story:

In ten years, we would have a much reduced quality of transit service in the central city, we would choke streets with clouds of buses and limit the growth of major areas served by the present and proposed streetcar system.  In return, Sheppard Avenue would have its subway, and what started as Lastman’s folly and a Liberal campaign promise by former Premier David Peterson would become a full-blown monument to the stupidity of transit planning and politics in Toronto.

via Will Nobody Stop Fords’ Folly? | SteveMunro.ca.

A full-blown monument to the stupidity of transit planning and politics in Toronto. Nicely said.


10
Jun 11

TTC shortfall to be approximately $80m

The National Post’s Natalie Alcoba:

Transit officials are bracing for the city to cut its annual subsidy by 10% next year, widening its budget gap to more than $80-million. And that’s without factoring in a new labour contract with workers that will add millions more, given that every 1% wage increase adds $10-million to the TTC’s bottom line.

via TTC looking at service cuts, fare hike in budget crisis | Posted Toronto | National Post.

That new labour contract is likely to provide a higher-than-normal wage increase due to City Council’s recent decision to designate the TTC an Essential Service.

The only way to significantly reduce the overall cost of the TTC is to lower service standards to the point where riders opt out of using the system. Thanks to aggressive strategies by the previous administration to expand service, TTC ridership has been rising every year. As such, costs go up every year.

Needless to say, a 2012 budget that saw reduced service and a fare increase could set off a chain reaction ridership decline. As more routes lose riders, they can justifiably be cut in future budgets under the guise of efficiency. The net effect would be budgetary savings for the city, but the overall economic impact of transit riders moving to other modes of transportation (driving, most likely) would be very bad for the city.

Related: An OpenFile, John Michael McGrath makes the case for road tolls in a very good piece.


8
Jun 11

Presto Chango: TTC looks to adopt new fare card

The TTC will consider a report this week wherein staff recommend adopting the Metrolinx Presto Card program. This program, now in its fourth year of a slow roll-out, aims to give every transit user a pre-loaded card that they can use to pay their fares on local and regional transit vehicles across Ontario.

It’s a good idea, but implementation has been stalled for years in Toronto because the province has only promised to provide partial funding. Given that the TTC faces a huge (and growing) backlog of necessary capital projects, asking local taxpayers to pick up about half the cost of implementing a system that will primarily benefit commuters coming from outside the 416 seems a little crazy.

In his well-worth-listening-to exit interview with Spacing Radio, former mayor David Miller spoke of a very early briefing note he was given regarding Presto. He paraphrases: “Warning! Warning! Presto will bankrupt the TTC! Don’t ever allow the cost of Presto to be put on the TTC.”

So what happened? Wasn’t it only a few weeks back that TTC Chair Karen Stintz was dismissing Presto as too expensive? Essentially, because the province holds all the cards when it comes to infrastructure funding, the TTC got squeezed enough that they’ve given in.

The Globe & Mail’s Patrick White:

The TTC’s refusal to adopt Presto had become increasingly untenable. Provincial funding for the Eglington cross-town subway contained a condition that Presto would be available on that line. In addition, all new streetcar orders have required Presto-compatible units and much of the TTC’s gas-tax revenue is contingent upon Presto adoption, according to Ms. Stintz.

“The commission has a decision to make: we could continue with open payment and put a number of funding agreements with the province at risk, or we could move with Presto,” she said.

via TTC report backs province’s electronic fare-collection system – The Globe and Mail.

The full TTC report is available. All in all, it’s a rather unenthusiastic endorsement for Presto, and the question of the remaining funding gap is left open.

The weird thing is that both the TTC and the minds behind Presto acknowledge that an open payment system (using a debit card, credit card or cell phone to pay your fare) is the logical end-point. The adoption of the current Presto card, then, is merely a stop-gap measure leading to the more open “Presto Next Generation” project, set for 2014ish. (But, then again, with a provincial election looming, who knows?)

The report also indicates that the TTC had a successful bidder from the private sector, willing to implement an open payment system in return for a percentage of fare revenue. That this option is being set aside in favour of the larger program peddled by the provincial government is kind of funny, given city hall’s preference for all things privatized and low-cost.


1
Jun 11

For whom the road tolls

So only days after Gordon Chong got caught by Royson James musing about the necessity for road tolls to fund Ford’s much-ballyhooed Sheppard subway, the mayor shut down the idea. “It’s nonsense,” he said. “I don’t support road tolls.”

(Later, Ontario’s Environment Commissioner would champion the idea of road pricing in a report. “We need to reduce the number of single-passenger vehicle trips in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area,” he said.)

Ford’s unwillingness to consider road pricing isn’t surprising. At the very least, however, Chong’s suggestion of tolls seemed to trigger a bit of reflection from other councillors about the reality of the transit funding situation. Even the Ford-allied Peter Milczyn, who chairs the Planning & Growth committee, told the Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale and Paul Moloney that “development charges are not going to pay for a subway.”

The transit debate continued at City Hall on Monday, as the Planning committee debated two motions relating to transit on Sheppard and Finch.

Over at his blog, Steve Munro does a hell of a job with a blow-by-blow recap of the meeting:

Councillor Joe Mihevc (former TTC Vice-Chair) argued that avoiding discussion now would lead to a finished product being presented for an up-or-down decision with no time for debate or public input.  He argued that people affected by the cancellation of Transit City want input into alternative plans now.  Stintz replied that Metrolinx is running a series of meetings regarding the Eglinton line, but what these have to do with service on Sheppard and Finch is hard to fathom.

As the debate continued, it was clear that Stintz was being too clever for her own good by trying to treat work-to-date as not part of “Transit City”.  This is an example of the gyrations through which Mayor Ford’s team will go to warp history to fit their agenda.

via Think About Transit on Finch and Sheppard, But Not Yet | Steve Munro.

Munro’s summary suggests that Stintz, even as TTC chair, still isn’t playing a significant role in defining the future of transit expansion in the city. It’s not overly surprising that she wouldn’t be able to provide concrete answers on the future of “Transportation City” given that, a couple of months ago, the mayor surprised her by floating the idea of a new subway line on Finch.

So what next? Nobody really knows. Chong has since backpedaled on his earlier comments, telling the CBC that “tolls would be one of the last things that would be considered” to fund subway expansion. He says he’ll have a business case for the privately-funded Sheppard project in a few months. They’ll get some P3 money from the feds, most likely, but that will amount to less than a quarter of the needed funds.

As for Finch? Buses. Fancy buses, maybe. I’d suggest painting a racing stripe on the side to make them look faster.


6
May 11

Stintz versus Stintz, on Presto

Councillor Karen Stintz, August 2010:

The Province would like to implement a smart-card system across the GTA and currently the TTC is the greatest roadblock. While the TTC should be working closely with the Province to embrace the smart-card, it works against the Provincial initiative by promoting open-payment.

via Open Payment System || Karen Stintz.

TTC chair Karen Stintz, April 2011:

The Presto fare system could vanish from the Toronto Transit Commission unless the cost gets down well below $200 million, TTC chair Karen Stintz said Thursday.

“The cost to the TTC cannot be $200 million, period,” Stintz said.

“Because we don’t have it and it’s not on the table,” she said.

via Presto pass could vanish | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto Sun.

What a difference nine months makes. Adam Giambrone, on this item, we give you permission to feel smug.


5
Apr 11

TTC chair continues to be surprised by mayor’s transit plans

Missed this last week, but the Sun’s Jonathan Jenkins’ report on last week’s transit announcements contains this bit at the end:

And Stintiz [sic] said while she had heard rumblings, Ford’s ambitious promise to build a Finch subway in 10 years was unexpected.

“I know that (Ward 1 councillor) Vince Crisanti has been actively pursuing a subway on Finch and I know that he had discussions with the mayor but I wasn’t apprised of the timeline,” she said.

via Province happy to hand Sheppard subway to Ford | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto Sun.

Nothing says “team player” like surprising your TTC chair with your plan to build a subway line. (There’s been other stories about Stintz being left out of the decision-making process, as well.)


28
Jan 11

TTC Chair Stintz not involved with new transit plan negotiations

John Lorinc, writing for the Globe, gets an interview with new TTC Chair Karen Stintz and midway through she drops this bomb:

In any case, her fingerprints won’t be on the final deal. The mayor’s office has left her out of the high-stakes negotiations with Metrolinx and the province over Mr. Ford’s subway plan. Ms. Stintz gamely insists the talks “are taking place at the right level” and denies that she’s trapped between the competing political agendas of the mayor and Premier Dalton McGuinty.

via Karen Stintz, new TTC chair – The Globe and Mail.

She also restates her support for the Eglinton line, but seems resigned to having no real influence as to whether it happens or not.

It’s mind-bending to me that the mayor’s office has left the TTC chair out of all major transit decisions. If Stintz isn’t involved, and Ford self-admittedly doesn’t know much about the TTC, who the hell is leading the charge in the Metrolinx negotiations?

As a postscript, as the news unfurls over the next few weeks and Stintz spins whatever new plan we end up getting as the right thing for this city, keep this quote in mind. It’s from just this past April in an article by (yet again) John Lorinc:

Stintz says she supports the Metrolinx “Big Move” plan, which includes the LRT network. “We came together,” she told me on Friday, “because it’s not a partisan issue, it’s a city building issue.”

I understand adapting to the winds of political change, but some consistency sure would be nice.